Jan 18 2010

WordPress Gallery MIA – Sometimes

Category: WordPressChrisM @ 11:45 pm

Am I really the only person having problems with WordPress’ gallery function? Since around v2.5, when I upload a batch of photos, add the captions etc, and save changes, around one in three times, no gallery link appears at the top, between From URL and Media Library. The last post had this happen, and after waiting 19 minutes, it suddenly appeared when I rechecked again. This gap in time makes me think that maybe there is some sort of processing problem, and that my host was throttling me, however a quick check in CPanel reports that

No CPU limiting factors (throttling) have been placed on your account in the past 24 hours

So, where to go from here? Carry on ignoring it, swearing occasionally at the randomness of this? I could try checking out the plugins currently active, slimming down the code in use to achieve a slimmer site. However, this testing will be made a little more difficult, or at least long winded, as the gallery link appearing (meaning the photos uploaded have been successfully assigned to the particular post concerned) often does work. So if I simply disable on plugin at a time, I could easily arrive at a false positive and assume one plugin the culprit, whereas the site was just behaving as expected somewhat randomly for a while.
I think this will end up being added to the long term To Do list for ChrisMerriman.com , along with sorting out the character encoding used in the SQL tables – the issue that prevents Cyrillic characters from being displayed.

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Jan 10 2010

Two Spoon Anna

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 9:03 am

The WordPress image upload gallery function is playing up once more, but this time waiting around doesn’t seem to have magically re-attached these images to a post, so back to individual posting again.

Anyway, the evening of the 15th of December saw Oleg arrive, and before he got to ours, Anna had her evening meal. She has now started occasionally feeding herself with a spoon (though obviously prefers fingers), and that meal time decided that one spoon was not sufficient to transport the food 🙂

Feeding Herself With One Spoon...

Feeding Herself With One Spoon...

Then With Two

Then With Two

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Jan 07 2010

Sleighs And Borsch

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 5:39 pm

Wow, just noticed that the picture gallery problems I’ve had with WordPress for months aren’t as bad as I thought – it appears that if I just wait a few extra minutes, the photos are actually properly linked to the post involved. Anyway, here we have Irina and Anna enjoying some fresh air in the garden, and also Anna seeming ecstatic over more messy food fun.
Oh, and the pictures were shot on the 6th of December, just before the International Winter Bazaar.

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Dec 31 2009

Betas Installed, Temperatures Dropping And Fireworks

Category: Weather,WordPressChrisM @ 8:51 pm

I have just installed WordPress 2.9.1 RC (release candidate) as I want to continue scheduling posts, and it was also an opportunity to try out the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.
The database was backed up first (though the automatic e-mailing of this every three days isn’t yet working, I’ve noticed), and I’ll schedule the next post for a few minutes in advance to check if the issues I was previously encountering have been vanquished. I also need to find the information on resetting file ownerships in Windows 7, as I can now access Anna’s pictures on the portable hard drive when not at home. I’ll check our home PC via LogMeIn later. The evening draws on here, and Anna will need her bath soon. As she is still only 10 months old, we’re not planning to keep her up for the arrival of the New Year. The last day has seen the temperatures drop again – yesterday we saw it rise to -2C, almost enough to ruin snowmen, with some snow melting, however today fresh snow has fallen, and the temperatures was back towards -20C again. I’m glad it isn’t dropping really low once more, as the fireworks that many people let off past midnight each year are well worth standing in the snow for.

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Dec 20 2009

WordPress 2.9 Scheduled Post Problems

Category: WordPressChrisM @ 11:21 am

Upgraded all my blogs to WordPress 2.9 last night, and took the opportunity to also update a handful of plugins on each site. Only one problem so far – scheduled posts are missed. That is to say that any posts I’ve written, and published with a date in the future are not made live once the correct time has passed.
Trimming my ping list down to just pingomatic did not help, neither did temporarily disabling all plugins active on this blog. Turns out I’m not alone in finding errors with posts that are scheduled – see this WordPress support thread. There are two options until a fix, and hopefully 2.9.1 is released – either goto the Edit page that lists all posts, and click the Quick Edit option for the missed post (then change the post status to Published), OR use the MIA plugin mentioned in that support thread. I’ve not tried the plugin myself, though others have reported success. For now, as I only have 3 posts scheduled to publish in the near future, I’ve used the Quick Edit route instead (editing the post directly does not allow you to change the status to Published, you’ll need to do it from the Quick Edit option within the Edit page for all posts.)

I’m a little bit surprised that this problem wasn’t detected with beta and RC1 testers, unless some last minute code changes were implemented?

[edit]
OK, looks like you might need to register at that site to download the plugin, and I was unable to leave a comment there as Comment Guardian apparently thought it was spammy. It also reported that Javascript or cookies weren’t enabled, which surprised me.
Anyway, I was trying to leave the following…

Until WordPress 2.9.1 is hopefully released, I imagine you’ll be getting a fair amount of new traffic to this post 🙂
Scheduled posts seem to be a problem for many 2.9 users.

Weird, my comment was detected as spam by Comment Guardian the first time, wonder if this one will get through? In case it makes any difference, I used RoboForm 2 Go to fill in the Name/Mail/Site boxes the first time – entered them manually this time around.

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Nov 17 2009

KZBlog Rehoused

Category: KazakhstanChrisM @ 3:42 pm

As regular readers will know, I quite often link to posts from KZBlog. The site is another blog written by an ExPat living in Astana, however it is a little more intellectual (in a good way) than this one.

Anyway, the site has now moved from the blogsome platform, to a new URL. Head on over to KZBlog.net, and don’t forget to update your RSS feed details or bookmarks, if you are already a regular visitor.

The theme has changed, and I suspect that now the site is based on a recent WordPress version, more plugins will be in use.

Good luck in the new home, and I hope you enjoy the new found freedom.

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Nov 10 2009

Walking Within And Outside Acceptable Bounds

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 11:42 pm

Once more WordPress has lost all idea about which post the following pictures are assigned to, so no fancy layout. Click the thumbnails to see a larger version…
The 19th of September saw these photos being taken. Before setting of for a walk to the Mega shopping centre, Anna had another little experimental toddle around the room, before settling into her pushchair for some fresh air. When we arrived at Mega, security guards swarmed the fountain whenever children even rested a foot on the wall, let alone ran/walked around it.

Summer Shoes With The Sun On Her Back

Summer Shoes With The Sun On Her Back

Having A Walk After Checking Her Website

Having A Walk After Checking Her Website

Anna's Blatant Breaking Of The Rules (Walking On Mega's Fountain Wall)

Anna's Blatant Breaking Of The Rules (Walking On Mega's Fountain Wall)

Quick, Run, Here Comes The Filth!

Quick, Run, Here Comes The Filth!

Very Important Man Returns To Slumber Position

Very Important Man Returns To Slumber Position

What Is Wrong With People Today - No Respect For The Law?

What Is Wrong With People Today - No Respect For The Law?

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Nov 01 2009

Eight Pence To Cross The Road?

Category: Kazakhstan,PicturesChrisM @ 6:26 pm

Once again the gallery function in WordPress decided that I didn’t really want to choose this post for the uploaded pictures. You’ll just have to survive reading this text with the photos thrown in at the end. A difficult task, I appreciate…
Anyway, these pictures were took back in September, Irina noticed that the button you press to cross the road was broken, and had (eventually) been fixed with a 20 Tenge coin. (Roughly eight British pence). For a while, if you wished to cross the road in one direction, you either had to wait for someone from the other side to press the button from their side, or shout at someone passing to do so. If passing pedestrian traffic on that side of the road was too light, and you had a wife and baby waiting to cross with you, run across (imagine a game of frogger, with different lanes of traffic moving at different speeds, and no extra lives – hit one Kamaz and it is ‘Game Over’ immediately.
Anyway, someone came along and fixed the faulty button by wedging the aforementioned coin in. This didn’t last that long, however policemen have been noticed trying to fix it again with the coin trick. One even offered 50 Tenge to anyone who could give him a 20 Tenge coin! Good to know that some of the force are genuinely concerned about the safety of Astana’s residents – you often feel as though if you aren’t driving a car, the authorities concern about your well being is somewhat diminished.

Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

Sharper Zoom Of Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

Sharper Zoom Of Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

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Oct 28 2009

Drafts Awaiting Publicity

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 10:15 pm

Just found a few draft posts sitting around in my WordPress dashboard again. More videos from Lucky21842’s YouTube channel. One features the mountains around Almaty (Kazakhstan’s old capital city), another on this country’s postal system, one on hang gliding (para gliding?) around Kazakhstan (I should probably cross post that to my SkyDiving site, as I need to post a new article I had written for it anyway), and finally one on some slightly twitchy policeman, once more in Almaty. I have a few more videos to watch, then I’ll be up to date with his recent vlogs, then hopefully (finally) posting some of Anna’s pictures that are awaiting publishing on my hard drive.

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Sep 16 2009

New Blogs For You To Read

Category: KazakhstanChrisM @ 5:39 pm

As you may have guessed from the category this post is in, all these blogs are connected with Kazakhstan. I’ll try to remember to write a post soon re-capping all the blogs I already follow with interest, for any new visitors to this site.

Keep It Simple, But Try To Make It Swing – A Peace Core Volunteer (PCV), only around a few more months, but worth reading back through the older posts.

Even Goes To Kazakhstan – Studying at KIMEP university in Almaty. Norwegian, so not all posts in English.

ABCyrillic – Love the name, this is another PCV, who I believe has just started their time in this country. I especially related to her stray puppy story, though mine was a kitten, back when we first moved to Astana. Where are you Charlie? I hope you survived the winter after apparently running away.

hmm, thats it apprently. I had thought there were another couple of blogs I’d also found via twitter, but is there were, they’re now hiding.

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